There's a Touch Upon my lips...

When I was at school, it was still in the days of Home Economics which consisted of one session of sewing and one session of cooking.

The Home Economics classes were in the lower ground floor of the school on the opposite side from the woodwork classes. Years 1 -2 there was a division. Girls did Home Economics, Boys did Woodwork. Come Year 3, the odd boy, and by odd, I mean one out of the many, I don't mean "odd" as in peculiar, might take cooking, but the girls didn't take woodwork.

My Home Eccy class was a double period, first on a Friday morning, and it was an hour and forty minutes I hated. Mrs McD was a terror of the highest order. She was most definitely not from the school of understanding and nurturing teachers. I was off the morning they handed out the patterns for the skirts we were making. When I came back she said "I kept this big one for you, to try and get you something that would fit round your hips".

Due to my reluctance to go to class, sick bay was my preferred spot, I was well behind with my work, so I took my skirt home on Friday and stitched it up over the course of the week. When I presented it to her on the following class, she ripped every stitch out saying "you do the sewing in class, you don't get your mother to do it".

Everything I did, she made me feel like poop. Half way through class one morning, she was working on a Sewing machine at the back of the class. As I sat sad and depressed in my seat right in front of her desk, well away from her eyes, I picked up my stuffed felt (it was supposed to be a fish, but it didn't look like one), and held it to my throat as if it was attacking me. Without even lifting her head from the sewing machine, her voice echoed out "Miss Henderson, put your sewing down and sit up straight or I will do that for you".

I won't even go near the story of my scones which were bounced off the kitchen floor :0(